Grapes that taste like cotton candy? Farmers create new all-natural fruit variety - without a chemical in sight

Plant breeders in California have created an all-natural grape that tastes like cotton candy.

Without genetic engineering or artificial flavors, The Graperyhas combined two grape species through hand pollination to create a seedless green grape which taste like the pink spun-sugar treat.

'When it pops in your mouth, the first impression is a rush of cotton candy flavor,' Spencer Gray, a chef in Culver City who has sampled the grapes, told NPR's New York Now.

Guilt-free dessert? Without genetic engineering or artificial flavors, The Grapery has combined two grape species through hand pollination to create a seedless green grape which taste like the pink spun-sugar treat

The grapes, which are produced in Bakersfield, cost $6 per flavor-filled pound, and are being distributed to grocery stores across America this week.

Horticulturalist David Cain wanted to bring back the natural flavors of grapes, which he says have been stripped away by decades of breeding fruit to withstand shipping and storage.

'A lot of fruit becomes tasteless by the time somebody buys it,' said Mr Cain. 'We want to change that.

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'When you go to the supermarket, there's like 15 kinds of apples — Fuji, Pink Lady, Gala, Braeburn. The list goes on. We want to give consumers the same array of flavors for grapes.'

The Cotton Candy grape is set to increase its production from just two acres to 100acres this year, with 200 acres planted for 2014.

And for those that are worried about sugar content, the Cotton Candy grape has about 12per cent more sugar than regular table grapes, but far less than raisins.

'It's like there's nothing to stop the sweetness. It just lingers on your tongue'

Chef Gray explained of it's sweet flavor, which has hints of vanilla, much like cotton candy itself: 'It's like there's nothing to stop the sweetness. It just lingers on your tongue.'

The world has dozens of grape species, but often large seeds or rough skin prohibits those grapes, such as the aroma-filled Concord grape, from every reaching a grocery store. Instead, consumers are only ever offered one type of grape, the Vitis vinifera.

So Mr Cain decided to combine the qualities of a Concord-like grape with the seedless Vitis vineferia by crossing the two species.

After fertilizing the plant, Mr Cain and his team at International Fruit Genetics took out the baby embryos from the plant, growing them in individual test tubes before transferring them to the field.

Mr Cain created approximately 100,000 of these test tube plants before he stumbled upon the cotton candy flavored grapes.

'The whole process takes at least six years and sometimes up to 15 years,' Mr Cain explained.

But The Grapery has no intention of stopping at cotton candy flavors.

Jim beagle, CEO of The Grapery, explained to GMA earlier this week: 'Some grapes we have in experimental trials taste like gummy bears, lollipops, grape soda, skittles and mango!'